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Future® impact
Future® impact
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Case study 1: Auditable reserves reference database Case study 2: Acquisition Appraisal The impact of using SERAFIM Future is almost immediate. The many benefits it brings to reservoir engineering and multi-disciplinary teams contribute to increasing our clients efficiency and productivity. Future also leads to a substantial rationalisation of the decision making process. Case study 1: Auditable reserves reference database This case study demonstrates how Serafim Future® can add substantial value to your reserves management and audit workflows through the successful experience of one of our clients. Summary A fast growing oil and gas company, with international operations, required a more secure and manageable reserves forecasting and auditing process. The aim was to allow the company’s executives to quickly identify and approve reference forecasts that would be used for reporting, planning and control purposes. The Challenge As a fast growing company, the number of assets, asset teams and reservoir engineers boomed in recent years. Production and number of wells also grew rapidly making it harder to track and store reference production forecasts used for calculating the reported economic reserves. Moreover, the variety of assets entailed the use of a range of forecasting methods from reservoir simulations to decline curves analyses. The auditing and aggregation of numerous production profiles generated by different means and stored in disparate locations under different formats made it even trickier to build the big picture and to control the process.
Executives at the client firm realised that improvements to their formal reserves calculations would certainly lead to improvements of their bottom line results. Managing production profiles Managing production profiles effectively and quickly is a source of competitive advantage for the producing firm. Effectiveness is created by the ability to combine, shift and change numerous production profiles for a large number of entities accurately, timely, securely and using the relevant inputs. At any stage of the process, engineers need to have a good knowledge of the manipulations and calculations occurring and avoid unforeseen errors. Spreadsheets, the usual tool utilised to carry out such tasks, fail to provide almost all of the requirements listed above. Moreover, storage, security and workflow modelling are not supported by a simple spreadsheet model even though each one of them is important to the performance and profile of the firm The solution Our client, who have taken the lead in the use and development of Serafim Future®, have integrated the use of Future in their business process and as a result were aware of the benefits it can yield in such situations. Future®, both the database utility and the software front end, provide a robust answer to the business challenge that our client faced.◊ Future®
Future® allowed the technical generation of the forecasts to be integrated into a standardised workflow, and provided tools for management of the workflow. Read and write permissions were specified per run. Forecasts were created, updated, approved and frozen so that no further changes were possible. Serafim Ltd is currently helping this client to create an even more versatile administrator control system that will allow the permissions and approvals to be specified at several layers - concession/asset/ field etc. Even though our client set up a corporate Future® database on MS SQL Server, the software still allows a great deal of flexibility for users: • Personal local databases that is directly accessible via either Future® software or utilities such as MS Access. • Results and models from one database can be copied to the other. • Reference approved or frozen forecasts can be used as the basis for new forecasts – such as for the next reserves cycle. • Future® is equipped with utilities that allows direct communication with databases, such as Schlumberger OFM (production and well test information) and VOLTS (reserves reporting). Results Our client reckons that the use of Serafim Future® allowed them to save two weeks of every engineer’s time per year just when using it throughout the reserves reporting exercise. The benefits of workflow management, security and reliability of data have been widely noticed, especially during official audits. ◊
Case study 2: Acquisition Appraisal In this case study, the impact of Serafim Future® on the process of evaluating an acquisition target is demonstrated. Serafim Future® was used to quickly and effectively assess the reserves, the value of existing producing assets and the value of developping the prospects. Risks and different development scenarios were also taken into account thanks to the versatility of Serafim Future®. Context Our client, an international oil and gas company with over 120,000bpd production, was interested in acquiring an E&P company with operations in Western Africa. The target firm owned concessions that included producing, undeveloped and prospect fields. The available data consisted of exploration reports and historic production records. The combination of short time-frames and unavailability of relevant data called for using alternatives to detailed simulator models. The Challenge The aim of our client was to generate P10, P50 and P90
production forecasts that would be used as input to the economic analysis
of the acquisition. The Alternative Hence, the challenge consisted in achieving the combinations of profiles, carrying out the necessary calculations, generating the three economic reserves categories (P10, P50 and P90) and building several field development scenarios for rig number and well schedule optimisation within the limited allocated time and using an auditable method. The most widely used tool for such tasks would be a generic spreadsheet programme. However, these have the following limitations:
The solution Our client, who have taken the lead in the use and further development of Serafim Future®, have integrated the use of Future in their business process and as a result were aware of the benefits it can yield in such situations. ◊ Modelling The leading Reservoir Engineer started by creating a surface network that honours the actual and potential future configurations.
Facilities constraints at the network nodes were modelled and applied. For each category of reserves (P10, P50 and P90) a model of the reservoirs was created and wells assigned to each reservoir. For producing fields,
historic production data was imported and interactive decline curve
analysis was carried out (within Serafim Future®)
generating future production profiles. Forecasting of associated gas
production used the free-gas:liquid ratio method. Calculations Rig numbers and well schedules were modelled by specifying a number of work sequences (timings of wells coming into production). For each category of reserves and work sequence a production optimisation (a run in Future® terms) was run. The results Thanks to the flexibility of the software and the fast run times, it was possible to copy and change run settings to generate profiles for different surface facilities and work sequences. It was also possible to compare the profiles graphically in order to assess the impact of the changes.. As a result, P10, P50 and P90 production profiles were generated with different rig schedule, facility capacity and pipeline timing. Results were reported per field and for the whole project. The use of Serafim Future allowed our client to quickly assess the potential of the acquisition and proceed with it. Shortly after the purchase, a large drilling programme was commissioned, boosting our client’s portfolio substantially. Our client’s perception
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